Imaginary Girls(45)

I doubted her story of the headache. She kept flicking glances at the reservoir, acting like she and it had some business to take care of. But to do so she needed me well out of the way.

Ruby leaned over the railing. “Who’ll be there again?” she called to London.

I heard London rattle off some names. Vanessa, Asha, a Cate or a Kate.

“Okay, then, that’s all right,” Ruby said.

I took a step to go downstairs and join London, but Ruby wasn’t done with me yet.

“Chlo,” she said, “could you do one thing for me? Keep an eye on her?”

“Why?” I wasn’t about to explain what I saw in the pool. She probably wouldn’t believe it; no one would.

“Because I asked you to,” she said.

“Okay,” I said, slipping a leg through the window. “I’ll keep an eye on her. Are you sure you want me to go out?” I was hesitating, hovering at the windowsill, knowing I wouldn’t argue if she called me back.

“Yeah, I’m sure. Oh wait. I thought of a second thing. Stay in town, you and London both. Don’t go anywhere else. Promise me.”

“I promise.” I put my other leg through. She didn’t call me back. “You’re not staying out here, are you? Not with your migraine and all?”

She shrugged. “I like it up here. I’ll probably be in this same spot when you come home.” To prove it, she reclined the lawn chair and stretched out, as though she wouldn’t just sit up as soon as I was gone.

Still, I felt her watching me as I balanced along the boards of the hallway and went down the stairs. I felt sure she wanted to call after me, take it back, all of it: telling me to go with London of all people, distracting me with stories about the reservoir of all places, making up that story about that Winchell girl and her little sister . . . But she didn’t call for me, and it wasn’t until I was in the passenger seat of London’s parents’ car, window rolled down and my hair ratting up in the rushing wind, that I realized this was my first real moment apart from my sister since I’d come home.

I wasn’t sure who I was without her anymore. Now I’d find out.





CHAPTER ELEVEN


  WITHOUT RUBY


Without Ruby, I turned quiet next to London and her friends.

It was London’s idea to go to the graveyard—to get high. If we smoked up in the car, she said, the cops or someone’s parents could drive by and see. This sure wasn’t what Ruby had in mind when she sent me off with London, I knew that, and yet I was reluctant to text my sister and fill her in.

I was left standing in the parking lot as they set off in the direction of the old cemetery. I looked across the road back at the newer cemetery, the one with the tall iron gate and the neatly mowed lawns, the one where London herself would have been buried if time had gone another way.

“Chloe! Aren’t you coming?” That was London, shouting from across the road.

More of London’s friends were there, climbing the hill. Asha and Cate. Vanessa and Damien. Some boy whose name I hadn’t caught. And then Owen, here though London hadn’t said he would be, here and not having spoken a word to me yet.

“Chloe?” London called, and then she turned and started climbing without me, so I crossed the road and headed up the hill before I lost sight of her.

This old cemetery was the one without a gate to mark its boundaries, with the stones so weathered, they sunk at odd angles back into the earth like they didn’t want you remembering them after all. Anyway, making it so you couldn’t even try.

Also, it was more private than the newer cemetery across the road. There was a raised mausoleum facing away from the sidewalk, and back there were two stone benches and a long-dead fountain, so you could fit a whole group of kids—five, six, seven, with me there, eight—and do whatever you wanted, having full confidence the town’s lackluster cops or occasional lurking perv wouldn’t be able to see. It was also a fantastic place to hook up with your boyfriend, or so I’d heard.

The mausoleum was gray stone, pitted and murky like it had been left at the bottom of a pond for a thousand years and then dredged up for some sun. I’d been here before. Ruby used to let me color with crayons over the engraved, locked door.

Before the private perch of the mausoleum there was a rising hill littered with the cracked and withered headstones of the people who didn’t matter enough to have their own house in which to spend their eternities. These people were so long gone, none of their relatives even lived in our town anymore. No one left flowers or came to have picnics atop their dirt beds on passing birthdays. No one tended the weeds here, so the hill was really all weeds now, far more weeds than stones.